


i want to be more than this devil inside of me

by showzen



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Yellowstone Magic (Blaseball Team), Yellowstone Park, this was intended to be a 12x100 but then i ran out of places to take it so.. 9x100 i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29821875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showzen/pseuds/showzen
Summary: Oscar Dollie turns to her, a friendly smile on his face. “So it’s your first full Magic game today, right?”Jaylen’s instinct is to be steely and distant. Pop the ‘p’ on her “yep” and go back to her phone.Instead, she says, “Yeah. I’m weirdly nervous. I’m not used to this stadium yet.”Dollie grins and pats her shoulder. “You’ll do great.”(or: jaylen finds herself in yellowstone park)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	i want to be more than this devil inside of me

It’s barely the second week of the season. 

Jaylen feels it coming moments before it happens—the silver lining of moving around so much, she supposes, you get a sense for it—feels her skin start to crawl and the back of her neck starts to itch, and suddenly, she is on the Magic.

The game goes on, of course, but afterwards, she sees them all fussing around Yeong-Ho and wishing them well.

She likes the Lovers well enough, but won’t allow that to happen to her. She shakes a few hands, shares a few words, packs her bags and leaves quietly.

-

Jaylen has never been one for nature or beautiful views, but even she can recognise that the park is stunning. She walks slow between the trees before she gets settled in, staring up the trunks of trees so tall and old she thinks they must have seen more than she ever will, peering at small dirt-covered things scrambling in the grass and the bush, closing her eyes and just listening, to the wind, to the river, the birds and the leaves and the pure energy that is vibrant in every square inch of earth.

She shakes herself and keeps walking.

-

Evidently there is no stadium here. Or, well, there is, but not always, and not often in the same place. Anomalies and space-time rifts are common here. She’s been playing too long to be surprised by any of it—even back at relatively-normal home, the Big Garage changes and grows rooms at will, and there’s the portal behind the Gum Wall. No, the real challenge comes in learning how to navigate them—her new teammates are experts, hopping in and out of distortions like it’s second nature, but she’s yet to do much but jump directly through one face-first into a river.

-

Mike visits not long after she’s settled, and brings her cats to visit too. It’s easier for him to get out of the Shadows for longer these days, but he still leaves a dark residue in the air behind him as he walks up through the woods with Cream Cheese and Caramelized Onions on leashes.

Jaylen makes a beeline for her cats when she sees them, dropping to a squat and cuddling them close.

“Hi, Jay,” Mike pipes up after a few moments.

“Shush, I’m saying hi to my babies”

Mike heaves a large, put-upon sigh, but does not protest.

-

They sit together high up on a stony cliff. Jaylen is already more used to Yellowstone than she thought; she sits with her legs dangling over the edge, staring openly into the water hundreds of feet down, swinging her feet idly back and forth, while Mike stays cross-legged a  _ good  _ way back, holding Onions’ leash tightly wound around his hand. “How can you sit that close?” He asks with a nervous chuckle. “And how can you let  _ her _ go that close?”

Jaylen glances over at Cream, who’s pacing the cliff edge, and shrugs. “I trust her. And I trust myself.”

-

Her first proper game pitching for the Magic is today. She sits and talks—well, doesn’t talk to them, really. She sits there with them while they talk, and feels oddly guilty, like she’s eavesdropping on something private.

Oscar Dollie turns to her, a friendly smile on his face. “So it’s your first full Magic game today, right?”

Jaylen’s instinct is to be steely and distant. Pop the ‘p’ on her “yep” and go back to her phone.

Instead, she says, “Yeah. I’m weirdly nervous. I’m not used to this stadium yet.”

Dollie grins and pats her shoulder. “You’ll do great.”

-

She does great. Least, that’s what they tell her after the game. She still thinks she could’ve done better. Letting in three runs? Really, Hotdogfingers?

Maybe the eclipse threw her off. She always was a little more distracted than usual under one—she hasn’t seen one in so long that she’d forgotten that feeling of breath-holding fear, the field bathed in dingy half-light, keeping half an eye on the umpires slinking around the ground like coyotes, watching for any of the twitching telltale signs of going rogue, knowing any second, you could be gone once more. 

She won’t forget it again.

-

She shoots off a lot of texts that night. To Mike, to the Garages group chat, to the league-wide pitchers chat, to the league-wide pitchers side chat, the one without Tillman in it, confirming her safety after the eclipse. The signal in the park can be spotty, so she wanders a bit outside, phone held up to the sky like an offering to the gods, and almost drops it instinctively at that idle thought. 

Her phone vibrates with every message sending at once, all of a sudden. She looks down and finds herself standing on a patch of turquoise grass.

-

Jaylen lays on her back in a field. She doesn’t know where she is, but a rift brought her here, so she figures it must be okay.

There’s a lake, with bison drinking from its shores. She can hear the tiny pattering of rodent feet through the ground, hears an almost-language in the calls of the birds.

She doesn’t feel out of place in Yellowstone. Between the scars that roam her face, the burns that creep up her sides, the inked tentacles on one arm and the desperate stick-and-poked fourteen tally marks on the other.

It almost feels right.

Almost.

**Author's Note:**

> hello, thank you so much for reading! title is from dear wormwood by the oh hellos. i'm seb#2979 on discord, and i can generally be found watching garages games in maincord or chatting in the big garage, so feel free to say hi!


End file.
